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This is my first sample from Eugene and Belle and it is a gem!!!! The smell of the leaves is that of green hay (my grandfather was a hay farmer) with a slight floral accent. The soup is a very light honey in color and smells like green hay mixed with flowers with a bit of smokiness thrown in. The taste is excellent. It is a very bold fruity/floral mixture with a beautiful huigan and absolutely no astringency. The energy of this tea is incredible, long after drinking this tea my taste buds are still excited and I can still taste the tea itself. I will be ordering a bing of this gem!!!!!

Another Sheng Yiwu snob alert!! Here is Eugene and Belle’s description for this tea: " This cake is a special Yiwu blend that we made to celebrate the birth of our son Miles, the dragon baby. When he was 5 months in the womb, he visited the mountains where this tea was made. The leaves are 80% Gua Feng Zhai, 20% secret :) Completely hand made, stone pressed & double wrapped, this cake is a gem." The soup starts off a very pale gold in color that by steeping four turns into the color of raw honey. The smell to me is a combination of butter and hay that is very pleasing to to the nose. The taste is a very sweet with a beautiful floral undertone. There is just a hint of kuwei with a very nicely balanced astringency at the end. This tea is not cheap, but it is worth every penny I spent on it. I just want to know what the secret 20% is!!!!!!

This is my first Tea Urchin tea and it lives up to its name. Eugene nails this one on the head: “Our 2013 Spring Bulang blend has all the hallmark bitterness of Bulang kucha, but with a complex mid-range and a delectable sweet top note & huigan.” The soup is a beautiful light gold and to me has a beautiful smell of butter. The taste is perfectly balanced between sweetness and bitterness. My favorite part of this tea is how it’s energy keeps the taste buds alive long after I am done drinking it. This is an excellent Sheng and if you love Shengs you really need to give this tea a lot of consideration. Well done Eugene and Belle!!!!!!!

This is just a tasting note. I steeped this tea 8 times tonight and it took until steeping four or five for the true flavor of this tea to come in and stabilize. For me the astringency and kuwei are backwards. For this tea, the astringency is at the front and the kuwei plays a backing role. It is still a really good tea, I just wish the kuwei played the leading role.

This is another excellent sample from Paul at White 2 Tea. On his Misty Peak website, Nicholas Lozito says that some Chinese don’t drink pu’er until after the second, third or even fifth steepings. I beginning to believe lately that the fourth steeping is the place to start and this tea shows why. The soup has a nice light bronze color and it has a very nice smokey smell. Steeping one has a very strong smokey flavor. After steeping two, a light astringency makes itself present. Steeping threes finds a bit more astringency with a hint of kuwei. It is steeping four and later that the taste of this tea hits its stride. It has a great smokey flavor with an excellent balance between kuwei and astringency. This is another excellent sample that I will be definitely buying in the future!!!

This tea really concerned me at first. After the first three steepings I thought I had bought myself a bing of water coloring, there really was no flavor to this tea to speak of. Steeping four and onward brought out a very sweet and floral taste to the tea that is very pleasing. I found absolutely no hint of kuwei or astringency with this tea. A really good Sheng that is a great bargain at $15 for 357g.

This is another sample from Paul at White 2 Tea. All I have to say is, curse you Paul!!!!!! Now I have to break loose with $145 for a bing of this beauty!!! The soup to me is a lovely honey color. The taste is heaven in a cup. This Sheng is MELLOW and tastes, to me, like butter mixed with cut grass. Sounds weird, but it is mind blowing good, simply mind blowing. I am just finishing steeping five, my tastes buds are in Pu’er bliss and it is time to get cracking on steeping six.

This is another sample from Paul at White 2 Tea. The 2014 White2Tea Manzhuan that I reviewed is Dr. Jekyll and this tea is Mr. Hyde. White 2 Tea says it best “An old arbor Menghai blend. Thick body, lingering kuwei [pleasant bitterness], and plenty of oomph. This tea is a continuation of last year’s New Amerykah. The blend is slightly different, focusing more on sweetness and body than on bitterness.”. This is an excellent young Sheng for those, like me, who like strong in your face Sheng pu’ers and it is definitely not a tea for those who don’t.